Her mother let out a broken sound while her sisters covered their mouths in shock. Austin felt like something inside him had just broken because five months meant hundreds of lies and shared dinners while she was hiding another life.
Brianna desperately claimed she was going to finish it because Julian never left his wife as he promised. “I was going to break up with him, I swear,” she cried.
“Before or after bringing him to our house?” Austin asked, and the question was worse than a shout because there was no escape from it.
Her father stood up abruptly and asked if she really brought that man into her husband’s home. Brianna jumped at the sound of his voice and whispered “Yes” while her father looked away in disgust.
“I called everyone this morning because I did not want to live inside a false narrative anymore,” Austin said to the room. “I am not going to sugarcoat what happened to protect an image that no longer exists.”
Brianna asked if he just wanted to humiliate her, and Austin took a long time to reply. “No, I wanted to find my wife asleep when I got home, and I wanted what we had to be real,” he said sadly.